In this Our Parent Journey episode, Mike Carr shares how trusting his son’s care team and focusing on long-term goals, rather than micromanaging, led to better outcomes. He highlights the value of ABA therapy in handling attention-seeking behaviors and celebrates his son’s unexpected progress, like mastering rock climbing. Mike encourages parents to adopt patience and a goal-focused approach for their child’s growth.
Trusting the Process: A Parenting Tips for Autism
Parenting a child with profound autism? It’s a journey, alright. More like a rollercoaster, actually, with all the ups and downs. One minute you’re facing a huge challenge, the next you’re witnessing something incredible, a little breakthrough that just takes your breath away. Mike Carr gets it. He’s a dad to a son with profound autism, and his experience has been a mix of those tough times and these amazing moments of growth. And for him, the biggest shift came when he learned to trust.
Early on, Mike felt like he had to control everything. Every doctor’s appointment, every therapy session, every single support service – he was all over it. He was driven by this need to make sure his son got the absolute best care, that nothing was missed. But honestly? It was exhausting. And frustrating. He was burning himself out trying to manage everything.
What changed? Mike learned to trust the team supporting his son. The therapists, the doctors, all the professionals involved. He’d always felt this huge responsibility to handle everything himself, but he eventually realized that letting go, trusting others, was the key to real progress. It was about trusting the process. And once he did that, things started to shift. He started seeing his son reach milestones he never thought possible. It was beautiful, truly.
Letting Go to Move Forward
For Mike, the “aha” moment hit hard—micromanaging everything wasn’t actually helping. It wasn’t making things run smoother, it wasn’t making life easier. If anything, it was just stressing everyone out—himself included. He realized that all that hyper-focus on every little detail wasn’t creating control; it was creating pressure, turning an already tough situation into a pressure cooker for his whole family.
So, he made a choice: to trust. He took a step back and let the care team—the trained professionals, the ones who truly knew what they were doing—take the lead. That didn’t mean checking out or stepping away. It just meant finding balance. Staying involved, staying informed, but letting the experts handle the day-to-day.
And you know what? That small shift made all the difference. When he trusted them to do their jobs, they actually did them better. His son got the support he needed, in the way he needed it. And maybe the biggest surprise? His son started to thrive. With everyone working together, on the same page, everything just clicked in a way it never had before.
The Role of ABA Therapy: A Game-Changer
This whole thing with my son… it’s been a ride, you know? One of the biggest things we did was start ABA therapy – Applied Behavior Analysis. I’ll be honest, I was skeptical at first. You hear so much, and it felt like a huge commitment. But it’s been amazing for him. It’s really helped him with some of the tougher behaviors that come with autism, and he’s learned so much.
The attention-seeking was a big one. It’s hard, because it can be so disruptive, and it just makes it harder for him to really connect with people and the world. But ABA has been great for that. It uses positive reinforcement, which is basically rewarding him when he does something good. Sounds simple, but it’s really powerful. We learned that the key is consistency. Patience, sticking to routines… Those things have been lifesavers.
It’s not like there were these huge, overnight “aha!” moments. It’s been more like little steps, tiny improvements, day by day. Sometimes it was hard to even see the changes, but we kept at it, just focusing on the long game. And slowly, things started to click. It hasn’t been easy, believe me. But with the right support, and a ton of faith in the process, I can see him learning to communicate, interact with others, and manage his behavior in ways I honestly didn’t think were possible before.
Celebrating the Unexpected: A Rock Climbing Victory
Man, there was this one moment… it just floored me. My son, he climbed a rock wall. Sounds simple, right? But you gotta understand, at first, the thought of him rock climbing? It seemed nuts. Completely impossible, with everything he was dealing with. But, with a ton of patience, consistent therapy, and this amazing care team in his corner, something incredible happened. He actually started getting stronger, more coordinated, and – get this – more confident.
It wasn’t just about him reaching the top, you know? It was way bigger than that. It was about him realizing he could overcome anything, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally too. It was a victory that went way beyond that wall. It was about all the hard work, the never giving up, the belief that things could get better, even when it didn’t look like it.
Him mastering that rock wall, it showed me what patience, long-term goals, and just trusting the process can do. It wasn’t some overnight success, and it definitely wasn’t a walk in the park. There were definitely setbacks, plenty of them. But after months of practice, all those little wins started to add up, and he hit this milestone that was… well, it changed everything. For him, for me, for our whole family.
Patience, Perseverance, and Trust
Being a parent, especially with my son, has been the biggest, most humbling learning experience of my life. And the biggest lesson? Patience. Seriously. Learning to just trust the process, letting go of trying to control every little thing, and keeping my eye on the long game… that’s been huge, not just for him, but for me too, as a dad.
If I could give any advice to other parents going through something similar, it’d be this: trust the experts. Trust your kid’s care team. They really do know what they’re doing. Give them the space to work their magic, and know that they’re doing everything they can to help your child thrive.
And try to focus on the big picture, the long-term goals. It’s so easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day stuff, the little struggles, but real progress, the kind that really matters, it takes time. It’s not always a smooth ride, there will be bumps, but if you’re patient, you’ll see results.
Oh, and don’t forget to celebrate the small wins! Even when things feel slow or you have a setback, there are always little victories to be found. A new word, a new skill, getting to the top of that rock wall – whatever it is, those moments are proof that things are working, that with the right care, patience, and focus, growth is possible.
My son’s journey has really shown me that incredible progress doesn’t always look how you expect it to. Sometimes, it’s seeing your kid do something everyone thought was impossible, like climbing to the top of a rock wall. For me, learning to trust the process – and trust the people who are helping us – that’s been the key to giving my son the best possible future.
Transcript
Mike Carr (00:08):
Welcome back to another episode of Our Parent Journey from transition to transformation for adult children that are profoundly autistic, severely autistic, level three autistic. They’ve got lots of challenges, and we promised on the last episode, we started giving you some very specific guidance and suggestions. So that’s what I’m going to do today as a dad. I have a 34-year-old profoundly autistic son, and this is probably one of the most important things I’ve learned in one of the hardest things for me, and I apologize in advance. But for instance, my son got up at three 20 this morning, so I’ve been up for a while watching him on the camera and everything. But I think back to the early days, and one of the things I learned as a dad was I tend to be a one driver personality type, very much in control. I want to solve problems quickly, all about just get it done.
(00:53):
Let’s quick messing around. That was sort of the strategy in the style that I had for our son when he was growing up, and I learned quickly that that was just terrible. It was not the way to go. So for all the dads out there that are frustrated with the speed of change, and well, this program isn’t exactly the way I want it. I really need it to be done this way, this way, this way, my advice to you is to chill. Now, I know that seems ridiculous. I’m a very hyper person, and you probably have some of those same tendencies too, but if you just sort of let it happen, if you find some folks, some people that have the right training, we have A, B, C, B, A, we have other folks that have advanced degrees in special ed or different kinds of therapies, and you let them take over the program and do it the way they recommend, the results are so much better, and you don’t have all the staff turnover.
(01:42):
I mean, I was so micromanaging we couldn’t keep people very long. I was driving ’em crazy. Why wouldn’t you do it this way? Well, I would do it that way. I wasn’t listening to them, and that was awful. So the biggest thing, biggest thing by far is trust your team. Trust the folks and not focus so much on what they’re doing every day or how they’re doing it every day. But what’s that end goal? Where are they going? So I’m going to give you a couple examples, right, because easy to talk about this in the abstract. So one thing I learned very quickly is how counterintuitive behavior therapy a, a applied behavior therapy is, right? As a parent, as a dad, and I can remember how I was raised as a child, if I saw my kid doing something wrong, I was going to get in their face and have ’em change it.
(02:23):
Why are you doing that? Quit doing that, and I discipline, and I’d really make sure that they understood. That was not accepted behavior. However, for the profoundly autistic, the severely autistic level three autistic, and our son in particular, a lot of others like him, that is absolutely the opposite of what you need to do. And they’re doing something to drive you crazy. You don’t react. And that is so hard. It’s so hard for me to do, but they’re looking for the juice. They’re looking for anything that gets a reaction from you. They don’t care whether it’s positive or negative, they just get their juice. I got dad react. I got him to say something to me. And so you end up encouraging the behavior that you actually want to discourage. So one of the things I’ve learned, it’s been very hard, it’s taken me lots of years, and I’m still not great at it, is if Michael, our son, does something that just drives me crazy and he knows it drives me crazy, he’ll look at me.
(03:10):
He’ll do something like, he’ll throw some stuff on the floor, he’ll look at me for a reaction, or he’ll throw his puzzle on the floor, all the pieces scattered right before he goes to bed and all over the floor. And he wants that reaction because as soon as he gets that reaction, he goes, oh, I got him right. And then he does it again and again, if I just ignore it, I just pay no attention to it. Well, there’s no fun anymore, and he stops doing it. So that was one of the things that I learned that was so hard for me to learn. And so non-intuitive really for me was don’t react. Don’t try to discipline. Don’t try to provide any attention at all unless it’s a safety concern right now, if Michael was walking out in the middle of a busy street, I’m going to react.
(03:47):
I’m going to scream at him, and I’m going to come yelling and get him out of that street. But other than a safety issue, you just have to let it go. And the staff, all our trained staff were just shaking their heads at me, and they finally got me to see the light there. And then a lot of the activities they recommend, I just thought were totally worthless. He went to this climbing gym, and I mentioned this early on in an episode, but lemme give you a little more color here. I mean, Michael doesn’t even understand holding onto things. You give him something and if he wants it to hold on, but if he doesn’t want, he’ll just let go, right? And so the whole concept of him going to a climbing gym and learning how to climb, I thought was ridiculous. Insane. He’s not going to like to do it.
(04:21):
And so the BCBA Hayden said, oh, well, let’s give it a try. Just see what happens. And sure enough, the first day, nothing, man, he wouldn’t put his foot up on the wall. He didn’t understand putting his hand, but they didn’t give up. And so day after day, week after week, they worked with Michael and he loves food. And so they motivated him with food. They put a little piece of candy or something right above his reach, and if he got there, then whomever was alongside him on the wall would actually give it to him. And so he learned that by climbing, he would get rewarded as he made it up the wall. Well, guess what happened? Now he can climb a 30 foot wall by himself without any incentives, and he loves it. He looks forward to it, and it’s exercise and it’s social because he’s got other buddies that are profoundly autistic or level two autistic, a little higher functioning that are right there alongside them with him.
(05:06):
And then he comes alive in those social settings and they start acting like bros, right? They’re doing things that anybody that’s in their twenties or thirties while other guys start to do that we never saw before, that I never saw before. So before you freak out and before you say, oh, that’s never going to work, or I think that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, or Man, I’m going to get in the middle of that thing, trust your team. If I had to give you one piece of advice that I have learned that has probably been so valuable, get out of their way. I mean, you have to hire folks that have the right spirit in mind, the right challenges in mind, how to address them. But man, if you just trust them and let them go and keep your eye on where I want Michael to be, not so much. How does he get there? I think you’re going to be delighted with the result. Talk to you again in a week or two. Bye.
